{"id":230443,"date":"2026-05-13T20:45:09","date_gmt":"2026-05-13T20:45:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/230443\/"},"modified":"2026-05-13T20:45:09","modified_gmt":"2026-05-13T20:45:09","slug":"future-of-no-more-24-home-healthcare-bill-uncertain-as-support-within-city-council-continues-to-dwindle","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/230443\/","title":{"rendered":"Future of \u2018No More 24\u2019 home healthcare bill uncertain as support within City Council continues to dwindle"},"content":{"rendered":"

Two more New York City Council members withdrew their support this week for Intro. 303,<\/a> the \u201cNo More 24\u201d bill that would ban 24-hour workdays for home healthcare workers, bringing the number of co-sponsors who have abandoned the bill up to five since April.<\/p>\n

Council Member Elsie Encarnacion (D-Bronx) pulled her support for the bill on Monday, while her colleague in the chamber, Ty Hankerson (D-Queens), formally withdrew his support on Tuesday evening.\n<\/p>\n

The legislative exodus stems from concerns about the language and financial realities of the bill in its current form. Intro. 303 wrestles with the needs of two vulnerable groups of New Yorkers: home health workers who are often low-income, immigrant women, and people who require round-the-clock healthcare, often the elderly or people with disabilities.<\/p>\n

Under a state law known as the 13-hour rule<\/a>, employers are allowed to pay workers for only 13 of a 24-hour home health shift, with the other 11 hours accounting for rest and meal breaks, given that a certain number of hours are interrupted periods of rest.<\/p>\n

Added to the broader economic pressures facing both workers and care recipients alike, and the debate over the bill has become increasingly contentious.\n<\/p>\n

The bill\u2019s supporters said that failing to pass \u201cNo More 24\u201d enables wage theft, puts care workers at risk of deteriorating health, and leaves thousands of workers trapped in a cruel system that devalues their work.<\/p>\n

But opponents of the bill, such as The Legal Aid Society, argue that the bill, as currently constituted, puts those in care at risk. The group applauded Encarnacion and Hankerson for being the latest to pull their support.<\/p>\n

\u201cTheir decision to withdraw support for the bill reflects a growing understanding that, as currently drafted, Intro. 303 could jeopardize access to essential home care services for older adults and New Yorkers with disabilities while failing to provide a workable solution for workers,\u201d The Legal Aid Society said in a statement.<\/p>\n

Since Hankerson\u2019s exit from the list of co-sponsors, a spokesman for the Legal Aid Society also emphasized that the bill now lacks any council support representing the Committee on Civil Service and Labor, the committee which stalled the bill following a hearing in February.<\/p>\n

Hankerson and Encarnacion\u2019s withdrawals from the bill followed Council Members Farah Louis, Shahana Hanif, and Sandy Nurse pulling their support from the bill in recent weeks. Hankerson reportedly told The City<\/a> last week that he would pull his support for the bill if it wasn\u2019t altered to include an amendment which allowed some workers to get a waiver allowing them to work 24 hours.<\/p>\n

But Hankerson told amNewYork Wednesday that his decision to formally drop out as a cosponsor didn\u2019t hinge on one specific thing.\n<\/p>\n

\u201cThe fundamental problems with this bill run much deeper,\u201d Hankerson said. \u201cThe City Council does not have the power to make these changes unilaterally.\u201d\n<\/p>\n

He reiterated a chorus of concerns which noted that funding for home care workers is issued largely through insurance companies and funded with state Medicaid dollars.\n<\/p>\n

Estimates put the cost of splitting each 24-hour shift into two 12 hour shifts at $460 million, according to SEIU.\n<\/p>\n

\u201cThis bill would force agencies into an impossible position: either stop providing care to nearly 14,000 vulnerable New Yorkers who depend on it, or violate the law,\u201d Hankerson said. \u201cIt simply would not be right to pit workers against care recipients and pray that the state would come in and fix the funding gap we created when both deserve better.\u201d<\/p>\n

Many workers serving vulnerable New Yorkers, however, have thrown their weight behind the bill, waging weeks-long protests and even hunger strikes<\/a> to draw eyes and hearts to their cause. Their sustained efforts were realized back in March following a protest, when Council Speaker Julie Menin all but promised<\/a> that the bill would be put to a vote in April.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Yet, increasing skittishness around No More 24 have put advocates\u2019 hope on hold. For home health workers advocates at Chinese Staff & Workers\u2019 Association (CSWA), a leading voice in support for the bill, arguments over funding amounted to excuses. Zishun Ning, an organizer with CSWA told amNewYork that workers cannot bear the physical or financial toll of working 24-hour shifts any longer.<\/p>\n

\u201c\u200aMany of these workers become disabled themselves by working these shifts so that the insurance companies and home care agencies continue to make a huge profit by stealing the wages from the workers,\u201d Ning said.<\/p>\n

Multiple lawsuits appear to support Ning\u2019s claims.\u00a0Despite state laws that require a certain number of uninterrupted hours of rest for 24-hour shifts, the Legal Aid Society won a\u00a0$600,000 settlement in 2021<\/a> against a home health care services agency for six workers who worked more than the legally allowed hours in their 24-hour shift, but were not paid accordingly.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Again in 2023, the New York State Department of Labor<\/a> won settlements totaling over $113,000 on behalf of two home health aides in Brooklyn and Staten Island who were \u201cdenied adequate sleep time\u201d and underpaid as a result.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201c\u200aSleep deprivation is a form of torture and what they\u2019re [workers] experiencing, the consequences they suffer from these 24-hour shifts\u2014it is torture,\u201d Ning said. \u201cSo that\u2019s got to end. That\u2019s why there\u2019s so much urgency. And I think that reflects on the hypocrisy and the shamefulness of all this opposition.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Two more New York City Council members withdrew their support this week for Intro. 303, the \u201cNo More…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":230444,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[90491,90492,301,15039,31672,9873,1213,75,84,83,9,24,82825,63,33711,47900],"class_list":["post-230443","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-manhattan","tag-13-hour-rule","tag-child-labor-laws","tag-city-council","tag-home-health-aide","tag-immigrant-workers-rights","tag-immigrants","tag-labor","tag-manhattan","tag-manhattan-headlines","tag-manhattan-news","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-no-more-24","tag-nyc","tag-the-legal-aid-society","tag-wage-theft"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/230443","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=230443"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/230443\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/230444"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=230443"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=230443"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=230443"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}